Sudbury man pens book about an extraordinary school

Len Solo - “Len” to students - was not your typical principal, and the school he led in Cambridge for 27 years before retiring in 2001 was far from ordinary.

Jeff Adair/Staff Writer

Len Solo - “Len” to students - was not your typical principal, and the school he led in Cambridge for 27 years before retiring in 2001 was far from ordinary.

The Graham & Parks School proved that teachers don’t have to spend hours drilling students on facts and figures in order for them to do as well on standardized tests as the best schools in the state.

At the “progressive” K-8 school, students participated in all kinds of exciting activities, doing hands-on learning, sometimes choosing what they wanted to study, and digging deep into a range of subjects.

Solo, who lives in Sudbury and since retirement has authored three volumes of poetry, recently completed his first non-fiction “Making an Extraordinary School: The Work of Ordinary People,” published by PublishAmerica.

The 200-page book includes stories about Graham & Parks students and teachers, giving readers a behind the scenes look at the practices and policies of one high-performing urban school. The book is easily readable and avoids educational jargon.

The book was written in collaboration with teachers, who wrote two chapters, and an observer from external group wrote one chapter.

It’s “one of those rare works on education that is a genuine joy to read,” author/social critic Jonathan Kozol says in the forward. “This is, in part, because the vignettes of the students are personal and vivid, the descriptions of the actual work of teachers specific and challenging.”

Roland S. Barth, founding director of the Harvard Principals' Center, also compliments the book, noting that Graham & Parks is noteworthy “because it is a public school with a long history of student-centered, democratic progressive education.”

Founded in 1972 by a group of parents who persuaded the school committee to open a choice school, Graham & Parks is a small alternative school. It was named after Saundra Graham, a former Cambridge councilwoman and state representative, and Rosa Parks, whose refusal in 1955 to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man helped launch the Civil Rights Movement.

The school has an economically and diverse student body, and at one time officials tried to balance it by gender as well.

When Solo was principal, the school had a number of unique structures, such as multi-grade classrooms, a community service component in which all middle school students did projects at sites across the city, and a variety of programs to meet the intellectual, social and emotional needs of students.

The school also had an active parents group with a staff member whose job was to reach out and persuade parents to get involved in such things as joining a steering committee or spending time in a classroom reading to children.

It was “not just active parents,” that the coordinator recruited, Solo recalled. “But also those who were afraid because of a language barrier, or lack of education … our coordinator stressed, ‘You have something to say and we want to hear from you.’ ”

The school went out of its way to fit parents schedules. Sometimes meetings were held in the day and sometimes at night, sometimes on Sunday afternoons. Solo recalled one time he and a teacher met a parent at a bar in Central Square.

“That was way cool,” he said.

Solo started writing the book right after retirement but got sidetracked doing other things. He said the book is “an attempt at a correction” of the current conservative agenda in education.

“We’re not in a good time in public education,” said Solo. “Education reform in Massachusetts and No Child Left Behind basically says you have to pass a test…there’s a standard curriculum. It’s taken all the power away from teachers.”

“There’s one sentence in the book where I say, ‘one can have standards and high standards, but you don’t have to have standardization.’ I try to teach how to get there ”

Solo said it’s really no secret on how to do this. There are certain structures an educator can put in place “that will help you get to a good place,” he said.

To start a school must have a basic belief system in teaching and learning, he said, noting that from the beginning Graham & Parks laid out its beliefs about education.

“Kids are naturally curious and the way they learn about the world is to experience it,” he said. “So we set up classes that allowed kids to explore the world … we had lots of projects where they were involved in making and doing things.”

Solo, who spent a good 20 minutes in a recent interview railing about high-stakes testing, noted that teachers at Graham & Parks assessed students through observation, presentations, and other means. Still, students were required to take certain mandated standardized tests, and in most cases their results were better than the traditional public schools in Cambridge.

The school, which has won several national awards over the years, was designed so teachers, parents and students were involved in decision-making. This structure helped in bringing more ideas to the table and “it helped us to make better decisions,” and since all parties were involved, “you get more people invested in the institution,” Solo said.

In the upper grades, students got to run meetings and learned democracy, not simply by reading about it, but through action, he said.

Students did not call the principal Mr. Solo.

“We all (teachers and staff) went by our first names,” he said. “We wanted to be less hierarchical arrangement. You don’t have to be called Mr. or Mrs. to have authority … I know this surprised some people about our school but once you understand it, it’s OK. ”

Not everything Solo tried at Graham & Parks worked. The book includes stories about several re-arrangements of the middle school and times Solo had to let teachers go who were not performing up to standards.

Solo admits that that he was fortunate to run a small school with a maximum of 380 students “which was a fluke” during his 27 years. Small schools leads to more one-on-one interaction; they “allow you to thoroughly know a child,” he said.

Community groups

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Sudbury Town Crier ~ 33 New York Ave., Framingham MA 01701 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service